Cascade is a program for analyzing the noise and distortion performance of a cascade of elements in an electronic system. A typical application of cascade is the analysis of a receiver. A text description of the receiver block diagram consisting of things like amplifiers, mixers, and filters is entered into cascade. Each element is characterized by its gain and optionally noise figure, and third order intercept point. The program then analyzes the system and produces a report detailing the performance at each stage. A summary is produced which shows the relative contributions to the total system performance of each block. This allows easy identification of what limits system performance.
